Lanzhou Hand Pulled Noodles (拉面)

EDIT: So after some of these comments, I think the best bet would be to use either kosher or pickling salt, first baked in an oven at ~150C for an hour in order to remove any possible moisture (ht @UCUCDDkCcUfwmJjNZRvXr2iw). Once that's cooled down, toss it in a food processor to get into a fine powder (ht NolanSyKinsley), then add in and do the same to grind/mix the other ingredients SANS the sodiium metabisulfite. Then add the Sodium Metabisulfite and mix it gently with a chopstick. While I still think that with this small quantity of sodium metabisulfite here it shouldn''t present any sort problem... there is an inhalation risk (especially over long periods of time) so to be extra safe do the next step outside (ht Jeffrey Gulan). Transfer from the food processor to a fine mesh sieve, then sift it again... then toss in the bag with the desiccants. Hey guys, a few notes: 1. Making alkaline lamian is either (1) a restaurant thing that people apprentice/go to school for or (2) a project for the true obsessives. Before you dive in, know what you’re getting yourself into. For most recipes, if something doesn’t work for you on the first go, you might think to yourself “hmm… this recipe’s meh, let me try a different one”. For these noodles, it’d almost certainly be because your technique is off. DO NOT DREAM ABOUT SUCCESSFULLY MAKING THESE ONE YOUR FIRST GO 2. So for people that’re, like, more normal than us… we’d suggest waiting until next week’s video -the chenmian - to hop in. Hell, even if you’re down for the project, you might want to wait to try the easier non-alkaline version first. I understand that it might’ve made some sense for these two videos to’ve been reversed (easier first, harder later), but we felt we just couldn’t share the homestyle chenmian without getting this out of the way at first. Because I mean… all those fancy movements that people see at the lamian shops, that’s what people are super curious about, yeah? 3. When you’re practicing these, you might get to a place where you just can’t pull them. Maybe you can only get ~3 pulls or something. It’s ok, you can still eat dinner. Flatten the dough, pass it through a pasta maker once or twice. Then cut it into noodles using the pasta maker. The noodles will still be firm and delicious! You just have to be a bit more careful when cooking, as they can break easily in the cooking process. 4. So to get things out of the way, I’m sure some of you might be curious if we’ve seen the recent SeriousEats article by Tim Chin on the subject. In short… yes. See, this video’s been simmering on the backburner for a while (we started learning/testing about two years ago, and testing started in earnest last October)… so when the SE article came out it hit us like a ton of bricks. And Tim actually touched on some of the stuff I was thinking about touching on in the video (extensibility! dough conditioners! disulfite bonds!), so it really threw trying to get this out there into overdrive. 5. Tim’s recipe, however, brings up what we consider to be a fundamental misunderstanding in the anglosphere about the purpose of the alkaline in these noodles. See, Tim’s noodles are non-alkaline. There’s this idea out there that somehow alkaline solutions might help the dough pull, when the reality is the exact opposite. Making your dough alkaline makes noodles much harder to pull, which’s why the lamian shops have all those… fancy movements. In a lot of ways, making a Lanzhou Beef Noodle soup with non-alkaline noodles would sort of be like making Japanese ramen with spaghetti: blasphemous, but probably still delicious. 6. This being the internet and all though, I feel the need to contextualize the previous note. We do definitely hold very strong opinions on this subject, but I want to say that even if we're correct (which I believe we are haha), simply researching this topic can be very challenging - even delving into Chinese language sources. This took a lot of research. Years worth. So when I'm giving a critique, it's not a value judgement. Tim is an incredibly smart dude. His noodles are probably very tasty. It's simply a reflection of what we've learned. 7. At it’s core, the home-style non-alkaline pulled noodles are pretty easy. Use the same sort of pizza flour, make some abacus string, do a couple long rests, cut them into noodles, pull individually. Works swimmingly – not exactly ‘quick and easy’ but it’s very realistic in a home setting. Less impressive looking though, for sure. And again, we’ll cover that next week. 8. Speaking of flour though, there is one difference between the pizza flour and the lamian flour: the former is soft wheat, the latter is hard wheat. Not 100% the difference that makes in the end, but there were some subtle differences when working with the dough. First, pizza flour is actually easier to knead – it seems to soften faster. But then after applying the penghui, pizza flour has this sort of tendency to ‘sag’. It works, for sure. I’d call it a direct sub. But something tells me that if you gave some pizza flour to a chef that’s worked for years in a lamian shop, they’d probably complain about it the whole time lol 9. For those of you out there that’re a bit hesitant to toss some random white powders in your food… feel free to do your own research too! Both Sodium Triphosphate and Sodium Metabisulfite are common (GRAS) food additives. Hell, the former’s often pumped into meat at the supermarket in order to allow it to retain moisture better/look plumper. Interestingly, the old Lanzhou university’s Penghui mix isn’t the only name in the game… and while some contain the reducer (i.e. the Sodium Metabisulfite) basically all of them have some sort of emulsifier. Why? No clue. 10. Speaking of emulsifiers – oil. REMEMBER TO KEEP THINGS OILED AT ALL TIME. Some of it will go into the dough, and that’s good! We ended up measuring how much oil we used during this whole process, and the total about is a shade under ~3 tbsp. 11. Oh, and btw… we tried to make solutions out of the sodium metabisulfite/sodium triphosphate. I felt like it might make sense to just have a bottle of sulfite-phosphate-water in the fridge… then when you need it, mix it with saline + (pure sodium carbonate) Kan Sui. Maybe you’d have better luck, but after three different tries of that/slight variations of that theme… that didn’t work for us. 12. So one thing you can do is, if you have some older dough or some failed noodles... you can add some more penghui and bring it back to life. We actually filmed that process, but I didn't have time to get to it in the video. Basically, you just apply touch of the Penghui using the abacus string method, then test the gluten & see if it's good to pull. 13. Last thing - one nuts and bolts filming-related thing that I'm not sure if anyone cares about/picked up on. You might have noticed that the lamian in the intro were a bit uneven. Here's the story. At our new apartment, every time we film we need to finish by ~1am, else the light gets too harsh outside. Ok. Now, Lamian usually get tossed straight into the pot right after pulling... so after pulling the noodles in the video, the shotclock was ticking. We needed to sort the thumbnail, then go to the balcony and get the intro done. But Steph thought we were doing the shot from note #12 right after the thumbnail, so I immediately reacted in horror when she brought the noodles back to the table, started kneading them back together and sprinkling on some Penghui. It wouldn't be the end of the world (though we were very happy with the six-pulls batch that was on camera) because we could do the process in note #12... except it was like 12:55 and we were then racing against the clock. It wasn't enough time to do a good job with it, so it ended up being a question of (1) do we want slightly uneven noodles in the intro (2) do we want to film the intro either inside or (3) do we want to film again the next day? We chose option #1. You can check out some of the stills else in the video... I promise we aren't lying to you :) I’m sure we’ll add some more notes here later!

Chinese Cooking Remystified.

Italy 🤝 China --> taking gluten THAT seriously

Husband?? Congrats Steph and Chris!!

i am CONSISTENTLY impressed by how talented Steph seems to be at literally everything

So many questions answered. I can finally sleep again!! Great job and so much quality research. Thanks guys :)

If anyone in the Lower Mainland is looking for Penghui, it’s available at the 柏仁/Big Crazy store in Richmond, BC. It’s at the very back of the store next to the pickles and chilis. It’s of the same brand used in the video

"Broken thick boy" was my nickname in high school....

I have endless respect for the amount of effort you put into this entire project. I know it's been a long time coming and I greatly appreciate your work.

You’ve convinced me to buy them at my local Chinese grocery!

Can I get a round of applause for Steph and Chris (mostly Steph) for all the research and elbow grease that went into this video? That Nike Sloth t-shirt alone deserves a friggin' award. (Steph again.) Just kidding, Chris. We love you both, obviously.

“Just do it later" lol that t-shirt suits me perfectly

Regarding chemistry: Have you tried a different gluten relaxer? As far as I know, SMS works differently from L-cysteine or glutathione, and from limited tests it seems that the L-cysteine and glutathione approach maintains more gluten strength while still allowing for lots of elongation. I've done a 100,000:17* ratio of flour to glutathione and ended with encouraging results. This may help give more pulls. Glutathione is available online as a supplement. Definitely will start playing with recreating the blue package though, thanks so much for giving a closer look and translation of its contents! *EDIT: missed a 0 when I first posted, ratio was off by an order of magnitude. 17mg Glu per 100g flour is correct

i am born and raised in Lanzhou, and I approve this message ! Thank you for spreading the gospel of my hometown to the world !

That difference on the flour explains why all chinese cooks that i see hydrates their flour so well, i thought it was only the chopsticks

The term "Pizza Flour" can be a little misleading here since not all pizza flour is milled to specifications appropriate for la mein. To understand what flour is appropriate for noodle making you need to be familiar with two rheological principles of dough and something called ash content. Ash content measures the the degree of the endosperm separation from the bran, germ and husk during milling. Lower ash content implies that more starch and gluten forming proteins are present in the flour per gram. Therefore flour with lower ash content will more readily hydrate and form a cohesive dough at lower hydrations. When it comes to Italian flour, tipo "X" is a reference to the ash content. Tipo 00 classification implies that the flour has below 0.50% ash content, typically around 0.35-0.45%. Not all Italian millers mill pizza flour to 00 specifications, it just so happens that antimo caputo chef's flour is "00". Japanese udon flour for example is usually formulated to 0.30 - 0.35% ash content. Furthermore the rheological properties (namely extensibility and elasticity) also play a significant role in noodle texture. Noodle flour requires a certain ratio of extensibility to elasticity. Higher levels of gliadin result in more extensible (easier to stretch) doughs, whereas glutenin results in more elastic (spring back) ones. Millers will blend different varieties of wheats to obtain specific ratios that are optimal for bread, pasta, pastry etc. So just going by ash content is not always enough. While i'm not an expert on la mein noodles, I know for wonton men and ramen noodles doughs with high elasticity and protein content are preferred. Elastic doughs are chewier and have more texture and very difficult to knead and role out. Precisely why you need a bamboo pole or special machinery to produce those noodles. Japanese Udon-Ko is formulated at 8-9% protein but is quite tenacious. "00" Pizza Flour usually runs between 13-14% total protein and "00" Pasta Flour i've seen as far as "9% - 12". Maybe you'll appreciate me nerding out.

I love how I found somebody who is just as technical and specific and thorough as me. Never change, keep up the hard work.

This is one of the best cooking videos I've ever seen. I have no intention of making Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles but I found the process and the modern history behind it fascinating.

I love the fact that you do everything you can to make all of your recipes accessible to those of us in the west. The effort is much appreciated!

Thank you so much for this. I've tried all the other methods I've seen so far, and they all come out flat. Cant wait to try this one!